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The 50th anniversary of the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco offers an important moment to assess how Spain remembers its past and how that memory is shaping attitudes towards democracy today.

 

Each year, November 20 has traditionally been a time to reflect on the consequences of nearly four decades of dictatorship and on the progress made since 1975.

 

Yet this year’s commemorations take place against a backdrop of growing historical revisionism and a worrying shift in public opinion among younger generations.

 

 

General Francisco Franco was the dictator who ruled Spain from 1939, when his forces won the Civil War, until his death in 1975.

 

In the months following Franco’s death, Spain began a rapid and difficult transition towards democratic rule. By November 1976, Spain had its first interim Prime Minister, the Law for Political Reform had been approved in Parliament and a referendum was on the horizon. The promise of free elections finally seemed real.

 

At that time, the assessment of the dictatorship’s legacy was stark. Contemporary voices, including national newspapers, stressed that the regime had failed to resolve any of Spain’s major historical challenges and had instead deepened social and political divisions.

 

Progress continued quickly. By the second anniversary of Franco’s death, elections had taken place and work was under way on the Constitution that would shape Spain’s most peaceful and prosperous era in modern times.

 

Problems entrenched by decades of authoritarian rule were addressed with a speed that allowed Spain to take its place among Europe’s democratic nations. A pariah state was turned into a darling of Europe seemingly overnight.

 

But now, 50 years on, the rise of the far right has fuelled a distorted narrative that casts doubt on those achievements.

 

 

A recent survey from the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) revealed that 17% of young people believe that today’s democracy is worse than the dictatorship they never experienced. This perspective stands in sharp contrast to the historical reality.

 

Franco’s regime executed opponents, filled prisons, forced thousands into exile, banned political parties, restricted freedoms, stopped people from speaking their own regional languages and denied women equal rights. It was a system built on fear and repression: your stereotypical fascist dictator.

 

But now, hate speech circulating online and the normalisation of fascist symbols in public spaces are adding to the erosion of collective memory. Cultural and educational initiatives to counter this trend have so far fallen short.

 

The Spanish government has a series of events planned to mark 50 years of freedom and democracy in the country, but despite its positive intentions, there is still not full agreement on what the legacy of Franco is in Spain.

 

For example, the recently published memoirs of former King Juan Carlos I present another difficulty. Although his role in supporting the democratic transition and leading Spain into a new era is widely recognised, the selective memories offered in his memoirs risk reinforcing a revisionist narrative of the Franco era and underplaying the efforts of the anti-Franco movement, which pushed for the reforms that transformed Spain.

 

Francoism did not vanish overnight. It left behind networks of power that lingered within institutions. Even so, through political compromise and despite episodes of political violence, Spain’s leaders widened the space for coexistence and made reconciliation possible. That reconciled, free Spain is one that we should not take for granted.

 

This achievement, not the authoritarian past, is the legacy that deserves to be remembered this November 20.